Actually the twin towers
were two 110-story skyscrapers built in lower Manhattan between 1968 and 1973. They were innovative in that their design allowed the structural load to be shared by a matrix of internal reinforced concrete columns and the vertical steel exterior columns. This allowed extraordinarily open space on each floor, only interrupted occasionally by one of the relatively thin interior columns. A missile is a projectile, specifically one that carries its own propulsion mechanism. By general definition, commercial aircraft are missiles. They aren't the infrared tracking, radar guided, or GPS targeted unmanned rockets that we typically denotate with the term missiles, but they were manned, self-propelled missiles that did a lot of damage.
Now that your fluff man (the usual term is straw man, but this one seemed to be more the consistency of the lint that you dig out of your pockets after washing) has fallen down, I present not only what I saw with my eyes for 3 years at Alabama, but what those who really count saw with theirs:
From
http://www.nfl.com/combine/profiles/trent-richardson?id=2533032
From
http://walterfootball.com/scoutingreport2012trichardson.php#glSuR3PZrt8VOs9J.99
From
http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl-new...sns-no-5-prospect-alabama-rb-trent-richardson
From
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/...o-3-browns-select-trent-richardson-rb-alabama
From
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...no-consensus-on-trent-richardsons-forty-time/
I watched with my eyes for 3 years at Alabama. Pro Scouts watched 3 years of game tape. General Managers watched 3 years of game tape. And everyone lauds Trent Richardson's agility, vision, and acceleration into holes, which are three qualities deemed most important in the success of an NFL running back today. Those qualities didn't just disappear overnight.
Some say that Richardson's rookie stats weren't good, but this article explains why the stats are misleading and that he had a fine rookie season:
http://www.footballperspective.com/why-trent-richardsons-3-6-ypc-average-does-not-matter/
I've already shown the statistics that show that Cleveland's offensive effectiveness increased significantly in the 2012 season and then it dropped in the 2013 season. Really the only variable between the two seasons is Trent Richardson.
Previous posts have made it clear that several coaches made statements that they believed that he wouldn't survive long with his running style and that allegedly even his coaches at Cleveland were attempting to change his style. Assuming that they were unable to get him to change his style in his first season and it seems that he was effective in his first season, if you look at team stats and understand why they brought him there in the first place -- to establish some ground threat to make their opponents' defenses have to account for him, his running style doesn't seem to have been a huge liability. I can't account for his ineffectiveness after that first season, but something changed that appears to have affected his natural instincts. The term "game slowing down" is used to describe the transition when a player isn't having to think about techniques, position, and schemes and is instead using more of his mental facilities for actually analyzing what is happening right now on the field. Missing wide open holes was something that he didn't do at Alabama and he really didn't have much opportunity to find holes in that first year in Cleveland, not to mention that he was trying to learn the playbook and other things. If you add "change the way you run" to the mixture of things an athlete is having to learn, especially if his body may be designed specifically for a certain running style, I can see how his instincts are suddenly thrown awry and he's making mistakes that are due to misappropriation of concentration and attention and the game has suddenly "sped up" for him.
I also don't understand this entire "conspiracy" thing. I don't think that anyone has said that the NFL "conspired" to destroy Trent Richardson. Conspiracy requires planning and cooperation between parties and I don't think the NFL is capable of that much organization. I blamed "convention" and "generalization", as in "this is how we've always done it", "all people are alike", "it worked for so-and-so, so you need to do it that way", "there is no standard deviation in the mechanics of the human body, we are all alike so we should all move in exactly the same way", "if that guy got injured running like that then it is a certainty that anyone else that runs like that will also be injured".
I effectively played tennis, softball, and basketball for years and studied Tang Soo Do for a year with a torn ACL. The conventional wisdom says that isn't possible. However, I have incredibly developed legs ( a former Alabama defensive lineman accused me of taking roids because of the muscular structure of my legs) and my orthopedist told me that I couldn't have a torn ACL and be participating in these activities, so he said it must have been a partial tear. I went over 10 years before I tore my patellar tendon and then had to have surgery. After the surgery, the orthopedist told me that he couldn't find much of my ACL because it HAD completely torn and apparently emaciated away in those 10 years. We don't all move the same, we aren't all made the same, and some people have physical gifts because of their unique body structure. I think that the only problem with Trent Richardson was that he was gifted with a special running style and it didn't correlate with the statistical mean that sports physicians and trainers read in their journals and published studies.
Physicians are omniscient (just ask one) because they studied for 8 years, wear immaculately clean white smocks that often make their visages imperceptible (like Christ during his Transfiguration), and typically have a staff of 20 that perform the menial human activities that are required before you get your 5 minutes of Evidence-Based Practice (the 20 questions that are ordered most efficiently for their time that funnel them to the 70% probability branch of the ICD-10 classification ontology) and subsequent diagnosis, shot in the rump, and prescriptions shoved into your pocket as they whisk you out the exit. Just don't ask them if they went to pre-med after they were weeded out of the Engineering College cause that'll get you another shot in the rump.
Here's a conspiracy for you: The U.S. Military took TRich's mojo to create elite autonomous cyborg warriors at Area 51.
. I just use the eye test and my knowledge from watching football every Sunday for 40+ years. I do regret opening up the conspiracy theory box! But as a computer tech, if I try and can't install software from a DVD on three different computer hard drives with three different DVD players, it crashes, it's the DVD 99.9% of the time. You are a great poster and I have always enjoyed your contributions to the forum over the years, that is a fact.
